Nachman and Raizy Glauber, both 21, died when a BMW slammed into their livery cab in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn as they headed to a hospital. The pair were married last year in their tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community.

“If he would have stayed alive, he would have been in memory and a little reminder to the grandparents of his parents,” Abraham told CBS. “And now that little boy has been torn away as well.”

The engine of the livery car ended up in the backseat, where Raizy Glauber, who was seven months pregnant, was sitting before she was ejected, Abraham said. Her body landed under a parked tractor-trailer, said witnesses who came to the scene after the crash. Nachman Glauber was pinned in the car, and emergency workers had to cut off the roof to get him out, witnesses said.

Police are searching for the driver of a BMW and a passenger who fled the scene of the accident early Sunday

Both of the Glaubers were pronounced dead at hospitals, where doctors performed a cesarean section on the mother to deliver the baby. Both parents died of blunt-force trauma, the medical examiner said.

Jewish law calls for burial of the dead as soon as possible, and hours after their deaths, the Glaubers were mourned by at least 1,000 people at a funeral outside the Congregation Yetev Lev D’Satmar synagogue.

Men in black hats gathered around the coffins in the middle of the street, while women in bright headscarves stood on the sidewalk, in accordance with the Orthodox Jewish tradition of separating the sexes at religious services.